In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.

Paragraph 2:

As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted.

Whoa. That’s some heavy-league stuff right there. Coordinated, targeted commercial espionage across a variety of vertical industries. Google first accuses China of stealing its intellectual property, then says that they weren’t the only ones. Mind you, industry experts – including the United States government– havebeensayingthesamethingforyears. Cries of ‘China hacked us!” happen relatively frequently in the IT security industry, enough so that it blends into the background noise after awhile.

My second question is, why, exactly, is Google trying to shift the focus of the story from the IP theft (which by their own press report was successful) and cloak their actions in the “oh, noes, China tried to grab dissidents’ email” moral veil they’re using?

Paragraph 3:

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Two accounts, people, and the attempt wasn’t even fully successful. And the moral outrage shimmering from the screen in Paragraph 4, when Google says that “dozens” of accounts were accessed by third parties not through any sort of security flaw in Google, but rather through what is probably malware, is enough to knock you over.

Really, Google? You’re just now tumbling to the fact that people’s GMail accounts are getting hacked through malware?

I don’t buy the moral outrage. I think the meat of the matter is back in paragraph 1. I believe that the rest of the outrage is a smokescreen to repaint Google into the moral high ground for their actions, when from the sidelines here it certainly looks like Google chose knowingly to play with fire and is now suddenly outraged that they, too, got burned.

Google, you have enough people willing to play along with your attempt to be the victim. I’m not one of them. You compromised human rights principles in 2006 and knowingly put your users into harm’s way. “Do no evil,” my ass.